Perfection Is As Perfection Does
by Rocky T
Summary: The 'real' reason why C/7 would never last...


_Disclaimer: Star Trek Voyager and all of its characters are the property of Paramount. This is just the sort of thing their twisty minds would come up with. Maybe. Under the proper, uh, influence.__  
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__Note: There are many guilty parties who bear varying degrees of blame for this story. Hopefully the suspects will recognize themselves and spare me having to point any fingers. __  
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__Thanks to Seema for the beta.__  
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__Summary: The 'real' reason why C/7 would never last..._  
  
  
  
**PERECTION IS AS PERFECTION DOES****  
****By Rocky****  
**   
Chakotay had a problem.   
  
And, as seemed to be so often the case these days, the problem was blonde.  
  
He tried to remember just how it had started. It wasn't like he hadn't experienced small 'attractions' before, over the course of Voyager's journey. There had been Riley Frazier, a former Borg, (he still remembered the shock of realizing she was bald as a billiard ball and those flowing blonde tresses were just a wig) and What's-Her-Name, the alien woman whom he never could quite remember (although he was pretty sure her blonde hair was real). But he had never before gotten involved with someone on Voyager itself, someone who couldn't simply be written off as an alien ship passing in the night...no, this time he'd hit the jackpot. In some strange twist of fate, this time he'd managed to find someone who was blonde, brainy _and_ Borg--and a permanent member of _Voyager_.  
  
When Seven of Nine had first come aboard, of course, romantic dalliance had been the furthest thing from his mind. He'd still been mooning soulfully after the captain (this was while still in his Red Phase--if you counted Seska--which preceded his Blonde Ambition) and anyway it had been more fun to snicker at Harry's pitiful attempts to score with the former drone. Although as Tuvok might have said, the odds of Harry and Seven living happily ever after were too small to be worth considering. For her part, Seven seemed to view _Voyager's_ first officer chiefly as someone who competed with her for the captain's time, or who continually told her what she was not allowed to do to Federation equipment.  
  
So over the years, they'd basically ignored each other, barely speaking to each other except in the course of duty, and not always even then. Chakotay had his occasional Blonde Alien Babe of the Week, intermixed with his regular dinners with the captain. And Seven progressed up the social scale from simple friendships to the point where she felt ready to try dating. Poor Chapman had been the first such 'experiment', but the Doctor had been able to repair the man's shoulder after that unfortunate dance mishap, so no harm--at least none permanent--had been done after all. And since then Seven had steadily advanced in her study of the social graces to the point where she was a pleasant companion for an evening's diversion. Chakotay had been flattered when she'd asked him to dinner and (once he'd ascertained that dancing was not part of the planned activities) had quickly accepted. It had been--nice. Nice to spend time with someone attractive, who obviously considered him attractive as well. He couldn't remember the last time Kathryn had looked at him with such interest in her eyes, at least not without a bottle or two of Antarian cider first. So why not spend his precious free time with someone who obviously appreciated him?   
  
A few more evenings on the holodeck had followed. Formal gourmet dinners, picnic lunches by a stream. They ate, and talked. Engaged in a little flirtatious banter. Totally harmless, right? They certainly hadn't done anything to be ashamed of, or that would make him feel uneasy the next morning. But he was beginning to get the feeling, from the way Seven looked at him, that she was ready for something a little more intimate than finding one's animal guide.  
  
All through the morning briefing he thought about the problem. Hard. About Seven's Borg background and what it might feel like to get jabbed with those assimilation tubules accidentally. About the former drone's obsession with 'perfection' and the way she'd already started in on him about his waistline. About Kathryn's glare of death. About the fact that even though he was much bigger than the captain physically, he didn't doubt she could inflict major damage if she was sufficiently riled up. He had no way of knowing Janeway would react negatively to the news that he was involved with yet another blonde, but considering past history, better safe than sorry.  
  
His affair with Seven wasn't common knowledge yet (or so he hoped) but with the efficiency of the ship's rumor mill, it was only a matter of time. And he liked his head and other parts of his anatomy attached the way they were, thank you very much. The only thing to do was to break things off with Seven, and quickly. He only hoped Seven wouldn't take the news too hard. He would be his most sympathetic self, perhaps throw in an ancient legend or two, then move in for the kill...  
  
"It's just not going to work," he said out loud.  
  
The rest of the senior staff looked at him in varying degrees of surprise. B'Elanna dropped her PADD on the table. Tom's chair banged against the floor. Seven pursed her lips in disapproval. Harry gaped like a Rigellian blowfish and even Tuvok raised a brow.  
  
"What don't you think is going to work, Commander?" the captain asked, a slightly testy note in her voice.   
  
"Uh, the mission," Chakotay said, somewhat flustered. He had tuned out of the discussion after the first couple of minutes, but it was a safe guess.  
  
Not safe enough, apparently. "We have been talking about the parameters and specifics of the away mission for the last 1.7 hours," Tuvok noted.   
  
"Yeah, if you had any misgivings over whether or not it was going to work, you should have said something earlier," said Tom.  
  
"_Much_ earlier," added B'Elanna.  
  
Chakotay felt the heat rising to his face. "Sorry, I didn't mean..."  
  
Janeway nodded abruptly. "If you don't have any specifics to offer, Commander, let's move along." She turned her attention back to the others and continued speaking rapidly. "Now if we reinforce the signal beacons _first_, by rerouting the..."  
  
Chakotay let the soothing blur of technobabble wash over his ears and consoled himself with the thought the meeting was bound to end sooner or later, and then perhaps he'd be able to do something about the embarrassing predicament he found himself in.   
  


* * *

  
He'd planned the whole evening out carefully. Dinner in his quarters, soft music playing. Chakotay had tried hard to strike the perfect balance between a seduction and 'letting her down easy.' He'd certainly been on the receiving end--of both scenarios--enough times that he had no doubt he'd be able to control the flow of events.  
  
But as with other things concerning Seven, nothing about that evening was destined to go according to plan. Before Chakotay had gotten a chance to deliver his little 'You're a nice girl but...and I hope we can still be friends' speech, Seven dropped a bombshell of her own over the dinner table.  
  
"You want to break up with me?" Chakotay said indignantly. It was one thing for him to decide to end things. But for her to take matters into her own hands..."But why? I thought you said we made the perfect couple!"   
  
"I was obviously mistaken."  
  
"I guess nobody's perfect," he joked but then saw that she meant it all right. "But why, Seven? Why do you suddenly want to end our relationship?"  
  
She refused to meet his gaze, instead looked down at her lap. "It would be inappropriate for us to continue in this manner."  
  
"But why?"   
  
"I cannot do this to the captain," she mumbled after a long moment.  
  
"Do what?" he asked in alarm. If anyone was doing anything, it had been Chakotay who had been contemplating the doing. Or at least figure _somewhere_ in the equation. But it had never occurred to him that Seven might have feelings toward the captain.  
  
Seven looked up at last. "I cannot betray her like this. She has done too much for me, and then there is the nature of my relationship with her..."  
  
"One point at a time, Seven!" He wasn't one hundred percent sure he wanted to know what exactly was the relationship between the two women. "Why would becoming involved with me constitute a betrayal?"  
  
"Because Captain Janeway has feelings for you!" Seven burst out.  
  
"She does?" he said in surprise. Feelings of impatience, maybe. Perhaps even kindly tolerance. But as for anything else...  
  
"Yes! She cares about you, very deeply! Even before your time together on New Earth--"  
  
"Whoa, I don't know who you've been talking to or what you've heard, but absolutely nothing happened between us on New Earth." It was true, much as Chakotay hated to admit it. Three months alone on an idyllic, verdant paradise of a planet--okay, except for the occasional plasma storm--and he hadn't been able to get _anywhere_ with the only woman on the planet. Even after he'd built her a bathtub. If only that stupid monkey hadn't kept getting in the way...  
  
"I am not talking about any physical consummation," Seven sniffed. Ah, so she did know Kathryn after all. "I am referring to the emotions Captain Janeway harbors toward you."  
  
"What kind of emotions?" Chakotay asked. He picked up his glass and took a sip, realizing belatedly that it was empty.  
  
"Do I need to spell it out for you?" Seven snapped in exasperation. She rolled her eyes when he nodded. "Fine. She loves you. She always has, from the very beginning, from the very first time you beamed onto _Voyager_, near the Caretaker's Array. Your calm, quiet support, your deep spirituality, your unwavering belief in her strength and leadership, your common goals toward uniting this crew and bringing them safely home..." As she talked, it all started coming back to Chakotay. Yes, he'd been a different person then, back in the old days, a person who had actually done the deeds, behaved the way Seven was describing now. What had happened to that man? He suddenly tried to recall when was the last time he'd gone on a vision quest; it must have been years...A sudden phrase caught his attention, "Why, she even appreciates your ancient legends!"  
  
He nodded. The Angry Warrior. Yes, this was why he was right to do what he set out to do, namely break up with Seven so he could go back to being in love with the captain. He was really glad Seven wasn't offering up too much resistance to the idea.  
  
He rose from the table and turned to leave, then stopped. And not just because he remembered this was his cabin. "But why should you care, Seven? I mean, I'm happy that you're all right with my leaving you, and I guess it's best that we end it now, before we actually _did_ anything--" he blushed, thinking of those few, candlelit dinners on the holodeck that had ended with chaste pecks on the cheek (he couldn't lean over far enough to get closer to her for anything else) --" but why is it so important to you?" Though he really, really didn't want to know and suspected with awful certainty that he was going to regret this big time, he took a deep breath and asked, "What exactly is going on between you and the Captain?"  
  
"I cannot tell you!" she said, obviously distressed, as her gaze dropped to her lap once more.  
  
"Sure you can, Seven. Are you--" he swallowed, reconsidering, "--do you love her, too?"  
  
"Yes." At that simple answer, Chakotay bit back a groan and resisted banging his head against the nearest bulkhead. But Seven wasn't finished. "Captain Janeway is my mother!"  
  
He tapped his ears in an effort to clear out any blockages. "I'm sorry, I didn't hear you correctly. Could you say that again?"  
  
"Captain Janeway is my mother!" she exclaimed.  
  
Cautiously, he said. "You mean she's been like a mother to you all these years, ever since she rescued you from the Borg."  
  
"No, I mean she is my mother in the biological sense."  
  
"Whoa, I thought the Hansens were your parents!" Another thought pulled him up short. "If the captain is your mother, then who's your father?"  
  
"The Hansens adopted me at a very young age," Seven said, leaving aside the second part of his question for the time being.  
  
"Why didn't you say anything before this?"  
  
Seven shook her head impatiently. "I had no idea of the truth until a short time ago, when I was packing up my things from the cargo bay, when I was preparing to move into my own quarters. I found a Borg data node I had overlooked before. It was my mother's, or rather Erin Hansen's, private diary, in which she detailed how she adopted me as a fetus, at the age of one month."  
  
"But didn't anyone know about this? Your father, er, Dr. Hansen?"  
  
"Magnus knew, but the rest of their family had no idea of my true origins. In fact, it was to preserve the secrecy that the Hansens left Earth, first to go off to an obscure space colony, ostensibly to study esoteric celestial phenomena. When even that proved to be too close by and the truth may have slipped out, Erin persuaded Magnus to adopt the study of the Borg and to strike out for parts unknown."  
  
"But why? What was so important that the secret needed to be preserved?'  
  
"I cannot tell you. It is a cultural thing."  
  
"Try me." After all, the study of cultural mores and rituals was his specialty.  
  
But Seven refused to budge. "You wouldn't understand."  
  
He gave up, tried another tactic. "So Erin Hansen adopted you, just like that? Did she know who your real mother was?"  
  
"No. But she did not care. She had wanted children of her own, and this was the only way she would be able to have them. She also saw to it that I underwent some basic genetic therapy, allegedly to correct a prenatal condition, but in reality to infuse enough of her own genetic material into mine that it would mask my true origins."  
  
Chakotay considered this newest development. "So that's why the Doctor never caught on that you were Kathryn's daughter."  
  
Seven nodded. "Any genetic anomalies could always be explained by interference from the Borg nanoprobes. It became especially easy after the Captain herself was assimilated."  
  
"Interference on two counts," he said, nodding in return. "Does Kathryn know?"  
  
"No, she does not."  
  
"Why didn't you ever tell her?" Chakotay asked. "Surely she figured out that you were about the right age to be her daughter."  
  
"She was never aware that she was pregnant."  
  
"She wasn't?" Chakotay said in amazement. Janeway was a brilliant scientist and more than capable captain, and she had no idea she was pregnant?  
  
"No. My father saw to that, arranging for the fetus to be removed before she was aware of its--my--existence."  
  
Again a reference of the mystery man whom Kathryn had been involved with. "Who is your father?" Chakotay asked again, more curious than ever.  
  
"I cannot tell you."  
  
"Seven, this is getting a bit old," Chakotay said with the beginnings of irritation. "Are you going to keep making me jump through hoops for all this information?"  
  
"It's really none of your business," she responded coldly, then paused. "And yet you are not entirely irrelevant to the matter at hand."  
  
A terrible suspicion began to grow in the back of his mind. But no, he hadn't even known Kathryn back in the Academy; she must have been around 20--in her junior year--when Seven was conceived. And he was sure he'd remember if they had ever-- "Who is your father, Seven?" he said for the third time.  
  
"The circumstances of my conception were most--unusual."  
  
"I'm sure of that," he said grimly.  
  
"It took place outside of the normal space-time continuum."  
  
His heart sank. Just what he needed--a technobabble explanation. "Uh, tell me more."  
  
"Suffice it to say that my parents would not have met under the ordinary course of events, but my father was no ordinary man."  
  
"His name?" Chakotay leaned forward in anticipation.  
  
"James T. Kirk," she said proudly. "I could do no better if I had sought to select the perfect parents for myself."  
  
Chakotay was assailed by a jumble of emotions: disappointment (it'd be nice to think that he and Kathryn had managed to do it in some time stream somewhere), relief that he wasn't Seven's father (not that their relationship had progressed anywhere near the point where it would get into any squicky issues) and major confusion. "Kirk? But he lived--and died--over a century ago!"  
  
"The reports of his death were greatly exaggerated," she told him. "The first time. And the second as well. And possibly even the third..."  
  
"Whoa, you're losing me here again, Seven. How could James T. Kirk be your father?" Though from what he remembered learning about Kirk in school, the man as well as the myth, he had no doubt that a) he was capable of charming his way into Kathryn Janeway's heart and b) certainly virile enough to have, well...doubtless there were a lot of Kirk descendants roaming around the galaxy these days. Some more closely descended than others.  
  
"I told you it involved time travel," she said, a hint of impatience in her voice. "The details were unclear, as Erin only recorded in her diary what she had personal knowledge of. But there is no doubt that Kirk was my father."  
  
Chakotay decided to let that slide for the moment. "And he's the one who arranged for your adoption?"  
  
"Yes. He must have known that the captain, or at that time Cadet Janeway, was destined to go on to many important things and could not afford to be saddled with the care of an infant at that stage of her career."  
  
"So he took care of it." Funny, he didn't remember hearing that Kirk took the time and trouble to clean up his messes. This must have been Kirk at a later stage of life, not the dashing rake of the original five year mission.  
  
"Yes," said Seven. "And the Captain must never know!"  
  
"But why not?" Chakotay asked. Seven's attitude made no sense to him. "She has the right to know that you're her daughter."  
  
"It would be upsetting to her, to suddenly find out a major piece is missing from her past, that something was kept from her."  
  
"She'd be even angrier if she did find out eventually and knew that you could have told her and didn't," he pointed out. "The truth always comes out eventually in cases like this, Seven."  
  
She shook her head so emphatically that a few strands tumbled free from her coiffure. "It would change the nature of our relationship and that is too precious for me to risk losing."  
  
Chakotay laughed. "You wouldn't be losing a captain, Seven, you'd be gaining a mother. Heck, she already treats you as a daughter." He reached over and gently tucked the errant hair behind her ears.  
  
"Exactly," she said, and burst into tears.  
  
"She's always treated you that way, along with Harry, and Tom, and B'Elanna..." Chakotay said soothingly. He passed her a handkerchief.  
  
"To my knowledge, I was an only child; I have no siblings," she said in a somewhat muffled voice.  
  
Not on her mother's side, at any rate. "I was speaking metaphorically."  
  
"Ah." Seven blew her nose loudly, then handed him back his handkerchief. "Yes, perhaps you are right. Perhaps I should tell her the truth."  
  
"At least think about it," he advised her, reluctantly taking the cloth and edging his way toward the recycler.  
  
"Thank you. I will. Tomorrow morning. Or perhaps the next day. And thank you for being so understanding. I can understand why my mother fell in love you." She gave him a look that was more than just bordering on gratitude.  
  
"Uh...yeah." He shooed her out quickly, then leaned against the closed door, breathing heavily. They'd warned him in the Academy there'd be days like this...  
  
His communicator chirped. "Janeway to Chakotay."  
  
"Chakotay here," he said, feeling it was inevitable that he deal with both of the women in his life tonight. "What can I do for you, Captain?"  
  
"I was wondering if you have the quarterly personnel report for me, Commander?"  
  
"Yes, I do." He rummaged through the items on his desk till he found it. "As a matter of fact, I was just going over it now. Do you want me to bring it by your Ready Room?"  
  
"No, I'm already back in my quarters. The report can wait till morning. I just wanted to make sure I'd have it first thing tomorrow."  
  
"Do you want it now?" he asked. "Really, just say the word."  
  
She hesitated. "I don't want to put you to any trouble."  
  
"No trouble," he assured her. "I'm right next door, anyway."  
  
He could tell she was wondering if he was alone. "All right then, if you're sure it's not a problem."  
  
"No problem at all. Chakotay out."  
  
Less than a minute later, he was crossing her threshold. He stopped short. Kathryn was wearing an outfit he had never seen before, something light and silky that molded her figure in all the right places. Chakotay swallowed hard and handed her the PADD, his fingers brushing hers as he did so.   
  
Color rose in her cheeks, but she smiled and scrolled through the report quickly. "Thank you. I was concerned about this, especially in light of what we talked about at the staff meeting earlier."  
  
Right. The staff meeting. "You should know you can always count on me." He gave her a meaningful look.  
  
"Can I?" she asked, returning his gaze just as intently.  
  
"Always."  
  
"Even with," Kathryn paused, "certain, uh, distractions?"  
  
"No more distractions," he promised, moving closer to her on the couch.  
  
"There's one blonde distraction walking around the ship right now," she pointed out.  
  
"Seven?" Chakotay laughed. "Believe me, Kathryn, you don't have to worry about Seven."  
  
Kathryn stood and took a few steps toward the viewport, then swung around and faced him once more. "It's all right, Chakotay, I understand why you might be attracted to her. She's beautiful, intelligent, strong-willed..."  
  
"Just like her mother," he finished. He gave his captain another meaningful look.  
  
"Her mother?" Kathryn asked, puzzled. "Did you ever meet Erin Hansen?"  
  
"That isn't who I meant." Chakotay proceeded to explain what Seven had told him this evening. She'd thank him for it later, he was sure. And for good measure he was careful to point out to the captain that none of his dates with Seven had gone beyond a few 'fatherly' signs of affection.  
  
Kathryn listened in silence, not interrupting once, although her lips quirked a bit when he revealed the identity of Seven's father. He finished and looked at her expectantly. "Well, aren't you going to say anything?"   
  
"That is the most preposterous, unbelievable story I've ever heard," she said at last. His heart sank until she added, "Right up there with the legend of the angry warrior." He looked up to see her smile.  
  
"Actually, I think it's a perfectly logical explanation," he said, and smiled in return.  
  
"Personally, I think perfection is overrated," Kathryn said softly.  
  
"I think you may be right," he murmured.  
  
_FINIS_  
  
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